Weather fails to dampen jazz weekend festive spirits

IT got off to a soggy start, but no amount of moisture could have killed the carnival in Cork last night where jazz junkies got down and dirty to swinging big band music and lashings of Latin groove.

Over among the six stages of the Gresham Metropole, the epicentre of all things jazz, the Sax Sisters injected a shot of sultry into a Friday afternoon.

The Dublin City Jazz Orchestra upped the tempo later in the day and by midnight, to a groove that had gained considerable momentum, it was time for the Blues Brothers Banned, an 11-strong outfit not for the faint-hearted, and then, the Jive Aces with all the glitz and glitter of the Rat Pack, before Harry Connolly and his band raised the roof and wrapped a long evening.